Whether or not you know it, achievements have changed the face of gaming. People are picking up titles they would never have touched to boost their Gamerscore to impress others with their once solitary achievement endeavors. So what you beat Halo 1 and 2 on legendary using nothing but the plasma pistol—nobody except your buddies would ever know. People you faced online wouldn’t believe you either. Achievements have brought a whole new level of competition into gaming, as these in-game awards have broken free from the shackles of your XBOX hard drive and become affixed to your gamer’s online identity for all to see.

As exciting as the concept of achievements is, in execution sometimes things fall flat. The problem is that developers are in charge of dolling out these hallowed awards. While this can be a good thing in cases like Burnout: Revenge and Call of Duty 2 , there’s some games with specific achievements that should have never made it off the cocktail napkin. We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite “worst” achievements to date. While there’s certainly several we missed, we think you’ll agree that these ones make it less of a “game” and more of a psychological experiment. And so we begin...

10. Mini-Games-Enter the Mini-Games mode- Madden 2007. This is just a mistake on EA’s part, they meant to call it “Turn on your XBOX.” You literally get this achievement by picking it from the main menu. Luckily it’s only worth 5 gamer points, but it’s still not quite an “achievement.”

9. Pyromaniac- Jack used fire to scare off enemies and get out of harm's way- King Kong. This is on here mostly because it’s not hard whatsoever, and that it’s so painfully at odds with 100 point achievements of modern-day games. To get this, you literally have to grab a torch and hit a button to light some bushes on fire.